"Okay. Sure you don't want to check out the nightlife?"
Silva shook his head. When the opportunity arose, Arnaldo always asked the same question and he always got the same answer. But asking was part of their ritual.
Arnaldo took a cautious bite of his cheeseburger and grimaced in disappointment. "You really want to have breakfast here? I'll bet the cook in this place can't even boil a fucking egg."
Chapter Nineteen
Ferraz's secretary was a uniformed policewoman in her mid-forties with a no-nonsense hairdo and an abrasive manner.
"I already told you on the telephone, Chief Inspector. He's in a very important meeting. He doesn't want to be disturbed."
"Just tell him I'm here," Silva said.
She gave him a scornful look, picked up her telephone, and stabbed a button set into the base.
"Chief Inspector Silva is here," she said and then, after a moment, "Yes, here. He asked me to tell you."
She hung up. "You can wait," she said.
A table against the wall bore a pile of magazines-a half dozen dog-eared and outdated copies of Veja, three of Agricultor Moderno, and two of Gente-as well as a tattered copy of Diana Poli's newspaper, Cidade de Cascatas.
The headline on the front page caught his eye: ANOTHER HAM: THE FIFTH.
Silva checked the date: Two days before the bishop had been shot. He picked it up and took a chair.
The photo spread across the bottom half of the page made it clear that the headline didn't refer to smoked pork. In Brazil the word ham, presunto, has a secondary and more sinister meaning. It's giria-slang-for a murder victim who has been bound in a special way, ankles tied to wrists, so that the body takes on a form roughly resembling a ham, and then shot, execution style, with a single bullet to the back of the head.
Making presuntos is a signature of a death squad, rogue policemen who take it upon themselves to thin out the ranks of the criminal population. It was an aberration in law enforcement, and as such, should have been immediately reported to the Federal Police. But no one had. Diana's article was news to Silva.
All five of the victims had been street kids, and all five had been murdered in exactly the same way, at a frequency of about one a month for the last four months.
Silva muttered an obscenity and reread the story from beginning to end, absorbing the salient details. He had plenty of time to do it.
Ferraz kept him waiting for a total of sixty-three minutes. No federal employee could have gotten away with it, but Ferraz reported to the State Secretary for Security, and Silva's department had no power over him. In the interim the colonel received three other visitors.
Two of them were together, a married couple in their sixties who arrived shortly after Silva did. The woman was carrying a toy dachshund with a collar that matched the necklace she was wearing. The gems on both the necklace and the collar could have been green tourmalines, but the man was using a gold Rolex watch, which led Silva to believe that he was looking at a dog that was draped with emeralds. Both the man and the woman were wearing jeans, designer jeans but still jeans, wealthy landowners by the look of them. Ferraz received them after a short wait.
They stayed about twenty minutes and came out with smiles on their faces. Their host didn't accompany them to the door.
Another ten minutes went by and another visitor arrived. His uniform and badges of rank identified him as a major in the State Police. There was a thin scar high on his left cheekbone. A scabbard in black leather that matched his holster hung from the opposite side of his gunbelt. The bone handle of a knife protruded from the scabbard. He ignored Silva, nodded at the secretary, and went into Ferraz's office without knocking. Ten minutes later, on his way out, he gave Silva the look that policemen generally reserve for felons, not colleagues.
More time went by. Finally, the secretary's telephone buzzed. "He'll see you now," she said, replacing the receiver. "Go on in." She made no effort to open the door for him as she'd done for the couple.
Silva stepped into a haze of cigar smoke and would have left the door ajar, but she came out from behind her desk and slammed it shut.
The colonel didn't waste any time on pleasantries. He didn't offer Silva a hand. He didn't even offer him a seat. Silva took one anyway.
"Okay, Mario, now that you've made yourself at home, what can I do for you?"
Ferraz said it with an insolent smile. The use of Silva's first name without having such usage offered to him was a breach of etiquette bordering on insult.
"Thanks, Colonel, for coming right to the point. I'm sure you're a busy man and wouldn't appreciate me wasting your time any more than I appreciate you wasting mine."
The smile faded. "Crap. If I'd shown up to see you without an appointment, wouldn't you have kept me waiting?"
"Not if I could help it. And I would have taken your call. You know what brings me here. I can hardly imagine you have anything more important on your agenda."
"What the fuck do you know about my agenda?"
Silva ignored the question. "How come you haven't informed us about those street kids?"
"What?"
Ferraz seemed genuinely surprised.
"The serial murders, Colonel. My business, as much as yours.
"Oh. That."
Ferraz made a dismissive gesture. "Paperwork," he said. "I didn't get around to it."
"The first one was four months ago, Colonel. Four months."
"I thought you were here because of the bishop."
"I am, or rather I was. Now there appear to be other matters that require my attention, notably serial murders, and the disappearance of the fazendeiro, Orlando Muniz."
"Junior," Ferraz corrected him. "Orlando Muniz Junior. How did you find out about the death squad?"
"From the newspaper in your waiting room. So you confirm it's a death squad?"
"Pretty damned obvious, isn't it? But they're only killing street kids, so who cares? It's not like they're knocking off honest citizens."
"It's still serial murder."
"Look, if you want to waste your time, I'll send you the paperwork, okay? I'll try to have it waiting for you when you get back to Brasilia, which I hope is going to be real soon. What else do you want? I'm a busy man."
"Have your men made any progress in investigating what happened to the bishop?"
Ferraz took another pull on his cigar and launched a jet of smoke toward the ceiling. "Nope," he said. "But we don't have to worry, because now we've got the Federal Police in town and if they can't catch the bad guy, who can?"
"You asked me what I wanted. I'm going to tell you. I want you to help me locate someone called Edson Souza."
The colonel blinked, obviously mystified. "Who?"
"Edson Souza."
"Why?"
"I think he might have information about the bishop's murder."
"You got a description? A profession? Age?"
Silva shook his head. "Only a name."
Ferraz puffed on his cigar. "So what makes you think-"
"We talked to the bishop's secretary. This Souza called Dom Felipe a few days before he was shot. They spoke about something so confidential that even the secretary doesn't know what it was. Maybe it's related."
"Okay," the colonel said. He picked up a pen and made a note. "Souza, Edson. I'll get back to you. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out."
Chapter Twenty
The following morning, Arnaldo got to the breakfast table first. He was already poking at a cheese omelet when Silva arrived.
"Look at this thing," he said. "I told you they couldn't even boil an egg."
"That's not boiled."